On
February 10, 2003,
a resolution recommending approval of UCITA (the Uniform Computer Information
Transactions Act) by the American Bar Association (ABA) House of Delegates was
withdrawn by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL),
the body responsible for drafting UCITA. The ABA delegates were asked to vote on
a resolution approving UCITA's readiness for consideration by state
legislatures. A positive ABA vote is a customary step in the process of
successfully passing proposed uniform laws such as UCITA. The withdrawal of the
UCITA resolution followed in the wake of increasing opposition to this
controversial act within the ABA.
The withdrawal of the resolution indicates that UCITA lacks the consensus and
support needed for successful passage of a uniform state law. Currently, UCITA
is an active bill in Oklahoma.

BILLINGTON ON DIGITAL PRESERVATION

Emphasizing the importance of preserving digital information, Librarian of
Congress James Billington notes that the average Web site has an online lifetime
of only 44 days: "The stuff that survives tends to be the least valuable: video
games, particularly violent video games, pornography, adolescent chatter from
chat rooms, even among adults. What vanishes is important scientific data sets,
important other information that is published only in digital form. We are in
the process of consulting with large numbers of people. This is a shared
distributed responsibility because it is such an enormous form." (The Hill
11 Feb 2003)
ShelfLife, No. 93 (13 February 2003)
http://www.hillnews.com/news/020503/loc.aspx

SETTING PARAMETERS FOR ONLINE RESOURCE USE

The
use of scholarly documents as references for term papers and other research has
plummeted at U.S.
colleges and universities as students turn toward easier-to-access Internet
resources. At the same time, professors have found that the URLs cited in many
student term papers are often "broken links"—they're either incorrect or refer
to documents no longer available on the Internet. A Cornell University study
shows that when professors set minimal bibliographic guidelines for doing
research, the number of citations of scholarly materials returned to
pre-Internet levels. The findings are based on a longitudinal study, conducted
between 1996 and 2001, of the research habits of undergraduate students taking a
microeconomics class offered by Cornell professor John Abowd. In 2001, Abowd
established minimum guidelines for term paper citations and began deducting
points when the citations were incorrect. As a result, the percentage of
functional URLs cited in bibliographies soared from 55% to 82%. In addition, the
total number of Web citations declined to 13% in 2001 from 22% in 2000, the peak
year. Students began referring to original sources, such as government
publications and legal documents, although the use of books in research has
still not recovered to pre-Internet levels. (www.newswise.com
3 Feb 2003) ShelfLife, No. 93 (13 February 2003)
http://www.newswise.com/articles/2003/2/WEBCITE.CNS.html

CULTURAL LANGUAGE TECHNOLOGIES CONSORTIUM FUNDED

A
newly funded language technology consortium will create tools to facilitate use
of the large digital corpora of important cultural heritage texts that have been
created in the past 20 years. The consortium is jointly funded by the European
Commission Information Society Technologies program and the United States
National Science Foundation Digital Libraries Initiative, and will develop new
computational tools designed to transform the way that humanists work with the
large electronic corpora of Greek and Latin texts available from groups such as
the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the Packard Humanities Institute, the Duke
Databank of Documentary Papyri, and the Perseus Digital Library. The
computational techniques will be available to individual scholars, students and
other users as an integrated part of a digital library system. The consortium
has set the following three goals: 1) to adapt discoveries from the field of
computational linguistics and information retrieval and visualization in ways
that are specifically designed to help students and scholars in the humanities
advance their work; 2) to establish an international framework with open
standards for the long-term preservation of data, the sharing of metadata, and
interoperability between affiliated digital libraries; 3) to lower the barriers
to reading Greek, Latin, and Old Norse texts in their original languages, this
last being the ultimate goal and driving force behind the consortium. (Ariadne
14 Jan 2003) ShelfLife, No. 93 (13 February 2003)
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue34/rydberg-cox/

Journal Editors and Scientists Call
for More Caution in Publishing Potentially Dangerous Research

By LILA GUTERMAN

Denver

JOURNAL EDITORS AND SCIENTISTS DECIDE TO BE CAUTIOIUS IN PUBLISHING RESULTS THAT
CAN BE DANGEROUS

Thirty-two journal editors and
biologists recently released a statement that calls for greater caution in
reviewing and publishing scientific results that could be misused or dangerous.
The question of when and how to publish scholarly information that could be
mined by terrorists or others seeking to do harm has intensified since the
September 11 attacks and the anthrax attacks that followed. Some government
officials have threatened to impose restrictions, and scientists and publishers
have discussed crafting their own approaches, in part to ward off such
intervention. The statement released on Saturday is one such effort. The
statement, which will be published in Science, Nature, and The Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, says that some information is unethical to
publish, but it does not define what experiments or facts would fall into that
category. Any procedures or definitions developed by journals must take into
account "that open publication brings benefits not only to public health but
also in efforts to combat terrorism," the scientists and editors wrote, since
such papers can point to counterterror strategies or ways to treat and prevent
the effects of biological weapons. When editors conclude that papers may result
in greater harm than benefit to society, the reports of such studies should be
modified or not published, the statement says. Some journals have already
established procedures for finding problematic papers, and those procedures
could serve as models for journals just beginning to grapple with security
issues. Some journals, such as Science and The Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, have recruited security experts with whom they can consult,
if necessary.
http://chronicle.com/daily/2003/02/2003021704n.htm
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/security/statement.pdf

LC
ANNOUNCES APPROVAL OF PLAN TO PRESERVE AMERICA’S DIGITAL HERITAGE

Today the Librarian of Congress
announced that the Library of Congress has received approval from the U.S.
Congress for its Plan for the National Digital Information Infrastructure and
Preservation Program (NDIIPP), which will enable the Library to launch the
initial phase of building a national infrastructure for the collection and
long-term preservation of digital content. Associate Librarian for Strategic
Initiatives Laura Campbell is overseeing this effort for the Library.
Congressional approval of the plan means the Library can move forward with
developing its details and Congress will release funds for the next phase of
NDIIPP. The NDIIPP legislation asks the Library to raise up to $75 million in
private funds and in-kind contributions, which Congress will match
dollar-for-dollar. In December 2000, Congress authorized the Library of
Congress to develop and execute a congressionally approved plan for a National
Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. A $99.8 million
congressional appropriation was made to establish the program. According to
Conference Report (H. Rept. 106-1033), "The overall plan should set forth a
strategy for the Library of Congress, in collaboration with other federal and
nonfederal entities, to identify a national network of libraries and other
organizations with responsibilities for collecting digital materials that will
provide access to and maintain those materials. ... In addition to developing
this strategy, the plan shall set forth, in concert with the Copyright Office,
the policies, protocols and strategies for the long-term preservation of such
materials, including the technological infrastructure required at the Library of
Congress." The legislation mandates that the Library work with federal entities
such as the Secretary of Commerce, the Director of the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy, the National Archives and Records Administration,
the National Library of Medicine, the National Agricultural Library, the
National Institute of Standards and Technology and "other federal, research and
private libraries and institutions with expertise in telecommunications
technology and electronic commerce policy." The goal is to build a network of
committed partners working through preservation architecture of defined roles
and responsibilities. http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndiipp/

WORLD
BOOK DAY ONLINE FESTIVAL

The first World Book Day Online
Festival will be held on March
6, 2003. It will showcase a range of world-class authors giving interviews,
talks, readings and chat sessions throughout the day, providing unique insights
into the lives of authors as well as opportunities for people to interact with
them and fellow readers online. A diverse range of events will be aimed at the
under 5s, 5-7 year olds, 7-10 year olds, 10-14 year olds and adults, including
lunchtime and evening slots for adult workers. There will be a live web cast
event, never seen before film footage and opportunities for online chats with
authors. As well as reading from their work, the authors will be sharing their
own reading preferences. Anyone will be able to take part in the Festival
through the People's Network, a UK Lottery-funded initiative connecting every
public library in the country to the internet. Schools will also be creating
their own linked events, and working in partnership with libraries to involve as
many children as possible in this exciting Day. The World Book Day Online
Festival has been funded by the Arts Council of England, and is managed by World
Book Day, Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries, the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, The Reading Agency
and Colman Getty PR. For information about other World Book Day 2003
activities, please also visit
http://www.worldbookday.com. http://www.worldbookdayfestival.com/

CURATORS GOING ONLINE TO MAKE NEW FINDS

Using online auction searches,
Bruce Johnson, a buyer for the Indiana Historical Society, found love letters
written nearly 100 years ago between an
Indiana farmer and his girlfriend. He also uncovered photographs of Confederate
prisoners of war at a camp in Indianapolis.
Museums and historical societies across the country now look beyond
neighborhood garage sales and antique shop piles, just as NASA contractors have
turned to online auctions for spare computer parts and lawyers have found old
documents and other evidence in the expanse of cyberspace. These acquisitions
have helped museums do more than plug holes on a wall and fill display cases:
They put a real face on the past that only a visitor's imagination could do
before. The old beer bottles and board games help shed light on how people
lived way back when. Though eBay is the largest online auction site, and the
most popular among curators, there are literally thousands of sites — with names
like BidCow.com and Haggle Online — where they can bid. For an exhibit on 1940s
American culture, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American
History went to eBay to round up war bonds and period stamps. The Vermont
Historical Society bought skiing brochures printed when the state's industry
first began to boom. An advertisement in an early 1900s copy of the "Ice Cream
Quarterly," looking for franchises willing to sell Eskimo Pies in Omaha, Neb.,
caught the eye of curators at the Nebraska Historical Society in Lincoln. They
also bought china pieces with a pattern that had inspired a Nebraska quilter.
Before online auctions, museums usually found only the valuable items like
wedding dresses that people saved through generations—not the everyday
dungarees.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=562&u=/ap/20030218/ap_on_hi_te/online_excavation&printer=1

READ
MORE ABOUT THE VALUE OF COPYRIGHTS

Should scientists meekly sign away the copyright for their research articles
upon publication? Can the obscene costs of some institutional subscriptions to
specialty journals—a 2003 subscription to Elsevier Science's Brain Research
runs $19,971—be justified? Would scientific research benefit from electronic
access to the entire biomedical literature, rather than just brief abstracts? In
this editorial from the February issue of Bio-IT World, Editor-in-Chief
Kevin Davies explores the controversies surrounding copyright issues and wider
access to scientific research literature—and looks at how some online publishers
are attempting to deal with these thorny issues.
http://www.bio-itworld.com/archive/021003/firstbase.html

NEW
SCHOLCOMM LISTSERVE

To
meet the increasing interest in scholarly communication issues and to allow
librarians and other interested parties to exchange opinions, views and news,
the Association of College and Research Libraries has established a new listserv
SCHOLCOMM. SCHOLCOMM is a discussion group that provides a forum for the
examination and analysis of topics such as open access to scholarly information,
new models of scholarly publishing, increasing journal prices, copyright law and
policy, related technologies, and federal information law and policies that
impact the access of scholars, students, and the general public to scholarly
information. This listserv serves an audience of librarians, researchers,
scholars, policy makers, and all who have a vested interest in the sharing of
scholarly communication.

3) If
you are already registered within the ALA structure of listservs, simply log in
and scroll down to SCHOLCOMM. Click on SCHOLCOMM, and you will be registered
for the list. If you are not already registered, you will need to follow the
directions to register for access to the entire site - a simple and familiar
procedure. Once registered, you can continue the directions in the paragraph
above to register specifically for the SCHOLCOMM listserv. To send a message to
the list, the address is:

Recently issued Executive Order
13233 restricts access to the records of former presidents. The Office for
Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association (ALA) and The Freedom
to Read Foundation (FTRF) urge librarians to alert their patrons and the public
about this effort to close the public record. Here are just a few books that
might never have been published had this order been in effect earlier.
http://www.ingramlibrary.com/nwsltr/feb03/ILS_readersadvisory.html

UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES DECAYING

Says columnist John Sutherland
about British university libraries. The reasons? Universities have expanded
faster than library acquisitions budgets; content prices have exploded; the
perception that the library will, after all, survive even if it doesn’t get this
year’s “transfusion” of new publications; space is a nightmare: “every library
is a pint pot trying to hold a quart;” remote storage makes browsing impossible;
library technology “eats” money. Sutherland notes that no university in
Britain is investing adequately in its library and he attributes that to the
“feeling (correct, I think) that a major overhaul in how we handle knowledge is
imminent.” Student habits are changing, knowledge is disaggregating in ways
that traditional organizational systems can’t handle. He likens the future
library as the equivalent of “a pub with no beer: a university library with no
books – but which will undertake to retrieve whatever you want for you” and
calls upon British universities to consolidate resources in a half-a-dozen
campuses, with the rest stripping down their resources drastically to
concentrate on focused distance borrowing. And his response to the blow this
will give to scholarly monograph publishers? “We don’t need the glut of
publication that currently smothers discourse and bankrupts libraries. Award
promotion on teaching and academic citizenship, as well as for published
scholarship.” John Sutherland currently teaches at Cal Tech.

Small Press Month presents a
particular focus on the vitality, diversity and importance of their work. The
program is jointly organized by the Small Press Center, New York City, and the
Publishers Marketing Association, in California.
"Small Press Month is about the heart and soul of publishing," says Jan Nathan,
Executive Director of the Publishers Marketing Association. "Independent presses
are as diverse as the 1.1 million books that they publish each year, but they
share much common ground. These presses cultivate talented new authors and
develop influential editorial voices, taking risks with authors and ideas. If
you want to uncover the growing part of the book publishing business, look no
further than the titles that are currently published by the independent press."
Fifty thousand independent publishers accounted for over $14 billion in sales in
1999 (well over half of total book sales), according to a comprehensive survey
by the Book Industry Study Group and the Publishers Marketing Association; this
figure has been on the increase since. Major events during Small Press Month
include the Small Press Book Fair, the country's leading book fair for
independent publishers, at the Small Press Center in midtown Manhattan, March
29-30. Over 200 independent book and magazine publishers take part, and special
events include literary panels and book arts demonstrations.
www.smallpress.org.

DIGITAL INFORMATION ON THE DARK SIDE

"Printed information is out of date," Bill Hill of Microsoft Research announced
at the November 2002 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum in Seattle. Hill
ticked off a list of reasons for his assertion: Electronic distribution is more
efficient. It costs less. Digital products can easily be searched, reproduced,
and archived in small space. They're even more politically correct. "You don't
have to clear-cut forests to communicate," he said. Computerized devices are
getting smaller, lighter, faster, and cheaper. And the new TabletPC device makes
it possible to create a great reading experience, comparable to a book, on
screen. "Tomorrow," he concluded, "it's all digital." But another speaker warned
participants to consider the "dark edge" of information technology. David Levy
of the University of Washington argued that society already is "bogged down in
more information than we can deal with." Information overload, along with the
rushing, busyness, and fragmentation of our lives, may be putting life "out of
balance." This overabundance of information may even be "morally dangerous"
because it may reduce our ability to focus on what is most important. "What if
we begin to think about digital library work from the perspective of the need
for silence and sanctuary and balance?" he asked. As "a symbol of organization
and order," he said, the library can help maintain the balance our society
desperately needs. ShelfLife, No. 94 (20 February 2003)

The
many obvious advantages of electronic document filing have made the practice
popular with lawyers and court administrators, despite legitimate concerns about
the long-term preservation and viability of documents so dependent on
technologies notorious for rapid obsolescence. Immediate benefits of easy filing
and court space savings could turn into future handicaps if antiquated
technology employing multiple platforms across multiple jurisdictions creates
troublesome problems of document preservation in accessible formats. Addressing
this concern clearly requires a national standard for electronically archived
legal documents, and at the moment, there are two likely candidates for such a
national standard. First is a version of the familiar Portable Document Format
(PDF) designed especially for long-term archiving, called PDF-Archive or PDF-A.
PDF files are self-contained, cross-platform documents that can be used by
different users regardless of their various types of computers, printers or
software. When a user sees a document in a PDF file, it appears just as it did
in the original because the user is viewing an image of the original. The second
format is Extensible Markup Language (XML), an application profile or restricted
version of the Standardized General Markup Language. XML documents consist of
storage units called "entities," which include parsed and unparsed data. The
documents also contain "markup," which encodes the document's makeup and logical
structure. Currently, there are committees at work on developing a standard for
filing documents in both PDF-A and XML formats. Ultimately the goal is to
prepare a standard for approval by the International Organization for
Standardization (ISO). Some experts expect the final version of the standard to
combine XML's strong cataloging and archiving abilities with PDF-A's ability to
recreate a document's original image. (National Law Journal 13 Feb 2003)
ShelfLife, No. 94 (20 February 2003)

US
Senator Ron Wyden told attendees at the Intel-sponsored Digital Rights Summit in
Silicon Valley he was close to introducing a bill that would likely require
consumer electronics devices or media to be clearly labeled with explanations of
any anti-copying restrictions. Supporters hope that as consumers avoid the most
restrictive technologies, the broader points about the undesirability of
limiting digital media use will be made.

Underfunded and often given up for dead, public libraries are
learning new tricks for the 21st century. Libraries could wind up serving as an
important channel for distributing digital content to end users says Lee
Greenhouse. Here are two examples he gives:

—The Chicago Public Library system gives its patrons access to
several premium-priced databases free of charge from home. Anyone with an
internet connection and a library card can go the CPL's web site, from which
they can use databases from such vendors as Proquest, Oxford University Press,
Gale Group, and OCLC, among others.

—The Cleveland Public Library is launching a system that lets
patrons borrow eBooks by downloading them onto their PCs or personal digital
assistants, such as Palms, PocketPCs, Tablet PCs, and other devices. This is a
first among public libraries and will operate much the same as a traditional
library lending system. A fixed number of copies of each eBook will be available
for downloading. After a preset number of days, the eBook will lock out the
current reader so another patron can check out the book.

“In contrast to eBooks,
which follow libraries' conventional lending model, making premium databases
available on the internet free of charge is a daring move which could create
thorny business issues between libraries and database vendors. If thousands of
people take advantage of free databases through their public libraries, database
vendors may demand higher fees. Libraries could find themselves having to pay
more for access or charge patrons for database use. Additionally, businesses may
become reluctant to pay for content that might be easily available free with a
library card and an internet connection. But for the moment, free database
access remains one of the best deals in the
Windy City.” Greenhouse Effects, February 2003

COPY
PROTECTION EFFORTS MISGUIDED, SAYS LESSIG

Lawmakers will be making a big mistake if they bow to Hollywood pressure and
enact new copyright-protection legislation based on today's Internet use
patterns, says Stanford
University professor Lawrence Lessig. Currently, millions of consumers are
downloading music to their PCs because slow dialup connections make it
impractical to stream content quickly to a variety of devices. "In the future,
it will be easier to pay for subscription services than to be an amateur
database administrator who moves content from device to device. We're
legislating against a background of the Internet's current architecture of
content distribution, and this is a fundamental mistake," Lessig told
participants at the Digital Rights Management Summit held at Intel headquarters.
(AP 20 Feb 2003) NewsScan Daily, 20 February 2003

Charles W. Bailey, Jr. has released version 47 of his authoritative Scholarly
Electronic Publishing Bibliography. The new version cites over 1,800 books,
articles, and printed and other online sources on the electronic publication of
science and scholarship. This bibliography presents selected English-language
articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in
understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Most
sources have been published between 1990 and the present; however, a limited
number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included. Where possible,
links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet.
http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html